By PATRICK OMORODION

THE excitement generated by the 2013 Federation Cup final between Enyimba Football Club of Aba and Warri Wolves Football Club has stirred up  Edo State Commissioner of Sports, Hon. Omorede Osifo’s big dream for Insurance Football Club of Benin which has slipped into obscurity in recent years.

Speaking at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos shortly after Sunday’s final of the prestigious Federation Cup formerly known as Challenge Cup, the Edo State sports commissioner said that serious efforts will be made to ensure that the once vibrant and popular team of Edo people returns among the best in the country.

“The FA Cup experience is a challenge to me. I will go back and make Insurance one of the best teams in the country. By the grace of God, come next year, I am sure Insurance will be one of the teams that will compete in the final wherever it will be played,” she assured. On how she intends to achieve this, Hon. Osifo said that with the conclusion of the 2012/2013 season, she is putting heads together with other football officials in the state to see how they will come out with a ‘new’ Insurance Football Club.

“The season just ended and we are having meetings and strategising to see how we can make Insurance one of the best clubs in the country,” she said, adding, “we are back on the drawing board to see that we don’t make the mistakes that were made in the past.”

She stressed that Edo is born with talents in football and other sports, adding “we need to harness our potentials, bring them together, work well with them and use them to get to where we should be. If we can do that, I see Edo returning as number one in sports in the country.”  Osifo who confessed that the job of a sports commissioner is quite challenging, disclosed that when she was appointed, Governor Oshiomhole specifically told her that he(Oshiomhole) wants to make a mark in sports and that she hopes to achieve that mandate.

“The Comrade governor told me that he wants to make a mark in sports, that he wants Edo sports to be better than what he met on ground. I am not under pressure to perform but I pressurise myself to make a positive change within the shortest possible time,” she stressed. Towards this end, she disclosed that once the tenure of the incumbent director of sports in the state expires, she would ensure that a very good successor is named to continue with the agenda of repositioning sports in the state.

She commended the organisers of last Sunday’s Federation Cup final but opined that enough publicity should have been given to the event to draw fans to the arena which she confessed should have been filled to capacity for a competition of that magnitude.

She was full of praises for Enyimba and Warri Wolves for their spectacular performance in the “keenly contested match which kept everybody on their toes. Everybody enjoyed it as nobody knew who was going to win after Enyimba equalised twice.”